2017 Plans

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As a recreational prospector I hope to have a much more productive 2017 summer than last year.Unfortunately, in the summer of 2016, my son was in a nasty car wreck and our summer prospecting was limited to 4 days of dredging.He is fine but it has been a nasty recovery for him the last 6 months. We hope to get out a lot more this year and the heavy snowpack should ensure adequate water for most of the summer/fall.We’re kicking around another trip to Alaska this summer for some dredging but have yet to make any commitments.We’ve got on some decent gold close to home the last couple of summers so it makes it difficult to justify the expense of getting up to Alaska.We’ll keep you posted as the prospecting season approaches.

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hello , my plan for 2017 , run my trommel , so I have 80 acres in Nevada county ca. , pretty high up , on a few small creeks , I have a dry leg of an older river that's 30 feet wide and 400 feet long to dig up , the creeks bypass it leaving it high and dry but close enough to pull water over to , I have my p.o.o. filed , my plan has passed the water board with approval , forest service seems good , but still waiting for final approval , the archeologist hasn't cleared my plan yet , but I think there should not be a problem , now I just wonder how much difference these storms will make on that dry leg I almost have full approval on , I hope its still there , I guess it could wash out , but at least I know there will be enough water this year , and since I can only dig by hand in cali , but I hopefully can run my little trommel , I will only run about 40 or so buckets a day by hand , but if my plan does not get approval , I will be looking to work elsewhere

I have considered heading north , maybe alaska or Canada , I would like to find a larger scale miner that has finished a cut and moved on , but before the reclamation begins I want to try a mini excavator and my trommel in the bottom of the cut , , but I do not know anyone up there and I don't want to just show up blind ,I know there is a lot of material left , too small or too spread out to chase after with large equipment, but I think as a small clean up crew , with small overhead it could be possible , let me know if you have any ideas , thanks

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Hello dredgernaut, sounds like you have a good summer planned, hope all gets the OK. Just wondering what type / make of mini excavator and trommel you are useing. Have a mini / mini myself and can feed a trommel or big banker, just curious.

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hey bud , thanks , me too , I built the trommel with a friend , I call it the "dredgenaut" , it is meant to be bucket fed , or small excavator , but the trommel will require direct supervision pretty consistently if using a mini ex. to feed it , and I have not purchased a mini yet , but I am willing and able too, should the need arise , California will not let me use one on my claim , and I am praying the will let me run my trommel , that is why I'm considering other opportunities , I work by myself because I don't have anyone to work with , lol , so I built the trommel to be very mobile , meant to be carried in pieces , 6 to 7 trips , heaviest piece is about 75 lbs. , I can carry each piece like nothing , made a backpack to carry the motors , here is a short , first test run , with old concentrates with some hammered lead added ,

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Dredgernaut, impressive trommel that you built. For the dirt we process here in Idaho and most of the dirt we've run through our highbanker, we'd need to have more water flow to clean the material in the hopper. Any way you can push more water through the hopper? Of course it would help the flow through the sluice box as well. Good luck.

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I plan IiIII think I'm going to have a very interesting season myself. Gonna be doing some dredgeing, digging with my mini / mini excavator & feeding a highbanker, then moving up one sde of my claim and clearing some timber and overburden to check and see if it's bench off like I suspect, and of course with all that I'll do some metal detecting as well. And of course haveing some fun along the way.

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Rick....I'd say the sampling was successful, very nice! What part of the US are you prospecting? With the snowpack here in Idaho, we won't be able to get near some of our rivers for quite some time. Glad to see your river is accessible. You'll be a busy man this year with 1k feet of stream bed? Will you be using a dredge to prospect I assume?

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JR. on the Mother lode in Northern California. Wife and I plan on holding this claim for some time so no hurry. No dredge as very little overburden and all slate bedrock so crevicing will be the order of the day. I attempted to use a gravity dredge but don't have enough drop for it to work.

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Good Luck to all who hope to reap the rewards of a strong runoff this spring. One recommendation; do not declare yourself as a "recreational miner". There is no protection under the 1872 Mining Law for "recreational miners". Consider yourself a "small miner". Only trying to make life a little easier out there. Chris, I think you will back me up on this.

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As a recreational prospector I hope to have a much more productive 2017 summer than last year.Unfortunately, in the summer of 2016, my son was in a nasty car wreck and our summer prospecting was limited to 4 days of dredging.He is fine but it has been a nasty recovery for him the last 6 months. We hope to get out a lot more this year and the heavy snowpack should ensure adequate water for most of the summer/fall.We’re kicking around another trip to Alaska this summer for some dredging but have yet to make any commitments.We’ve got on some decent gold close to home the last couple of summers so it makes it difficult to justify the expense of getting up to Alaska.We’ll keep you posted as the prospecting season approaches.

What are your 2017 Plans/Objective?

What area are you working in Idaho and are you having any luck? I live in the Idaho City area, but do to medical issues I haven't been able to get my gold pan wet this year.

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Hey Gambrinus, good to hear from you. You know we've only had the dredge out for 4 days once this summer up in the Idaho City area. In the four days We had a total of 16 hrs of dive time on the nozzle with limited success. Picked-up lots of mercury gold. Its been crazy busy for us and we plan to get back up there one more time but the Fire situation and air quality are so nasty we're not sure we'll make it back up. How long have you lived in the Idaho City area?

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I moved here in 1980, back when there were "Old Timers" miners still alive and I was dredging on Elk Creek with a 6" dredge, just 1/2 mile north of town. How times have changed. In fact that is the reason I gave up dredging, because of all the insane laws.

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Still work on Elk creek albeit a few miles further up from town. Wish I had some better history of the area I'm working as it would likely help my recovery.

Do you have a claim on Elk creek? Do you know Dean from Utah? I have really been out of touch on mining around here but have always liked the Elk creek area and I have some knowledge about it.

Maybe we could hook up sometime, it would be fun for me too just get out and look around. I am in recovery from rotator cuff surgery and I am not trying to horn in on your operation or jump your claim, I just really enjoy gold mining and wish it would pay wages enough to call that my job but I haven't found that to be the case for me.

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Yes, we are associated with some folks that have a state lease on some Elk Creek mineral claims. We've worked it for the last few years but have never really got on a decent pay streak. I think the Elk Creek bottom has been turned over a number of times and that's why I think it would be helpful if I had some insight to the history on how it has been worked. It would be good to hook up but I think we're done for this year as my weekends are booked until the snow flies. That being said, I think it would be hard to make any wages on Elk Creek unless you stumbled onto some ground that hasn't been worked.

With regard to Dean, I've met a bunch of folks from the Northern Utah Prospecting association who camp above Elk Creek when they have a club event. I've ran into them two or three times. Not sure if Dean is one of them or not but last time I ran into them they were working claims owned by Puma Mining also on Elk creek. They were running a trammel operation and moving a fair amount of dirt given there were so many of them.

In any event, lets keep in touch,

JR

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Most of Elk creek that is on state land got worked pretty heavy, for one reason is that the old timers had enough room to divert the creek to one side and mine that material, then divert the water to the other side and get the rest. The better places to dredge are where the creek narrows in the canyon, also the gold gets concentrated better there because it doesn't get widely dispersed naturally.

Another reason the narrows are better is because of large boulders which the old timers were less inclined to move, in fact most of the good paying ground I have found anywhere in Boise Basin had problems, either large boulders or lack of water.

Dean who I spoke of had much of Elk creek staked on fed and state land a few years ago, but he was in bad health the last time I saw him, so I hoped you may have met him and maybe knew his status. He is a very nice man and would let you dredge his ground for the small fee of just showing him the gold that you found.

My girlfriend is coming up from Marsing tomorrow so I think we will take a drive up there and have a look around.

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ya buddy , already done , this was the first run , ever , I added a bunch more hole in the hopper spray bars , much better now

That is a good looking well designed and built trommel! A similar one is on my project list. How did your season at your 80 acre prospect work out? My prospecting this year was a series of distractions and I didn't get to nearly as many places as I planned on. Wait 'til next year.

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thanks Mr. T , it was very good , too much hard work for sure , lol , trommel ran great , looking forward to melt off so I can get back in , ive been trying to find a warmer spot to frequent in the winter months , but I think its cold everywhere , have 5 buckets of fines to clean up , but winter is still long , , I will do a lot more of the same thing this coming summer and I would like to prospect colorado for a couple weeks if I can get in where I'm thinking . I hope everything works for you this year just leave some gold for me . lol